


An Owlkeeper and a Kingmaker

by chantefable



Series: Beltane Collection [6]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Auror Harry Potter, Aurors, Beltane, Centaurs, Cookies, Daily Prophet, Diagon Alley, Family, Financial Issues, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Gringotts Wizarding Bank, Healer Draco, Healers, Knockturn Alley, Leaky Cauldron, M/M, Matchmaking, Ministry of Magic, Owls, Politics, St Mungo's Hospital, Tea, Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-30
Updated: 2015-06-30
Packaged: 2018-04-06 19:41:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4234200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chantefable/pseuds/chantefable
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some days Teddy Lupin feels like he's the last sane person in the world. This may even be true, but it certainly doesn't make his life easier.</p><p>(In which the owls are on strike, Teddy and Draco eat a lot of biscuits, Neville practices civil disobedience, and the Public Magical Healthcare System is under threat.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Owlkeeper and a Kingmaker

**Author's Note:**

  * For [curiouslyfic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/curiouslyfic/gifts).



The early morning was glum. Mist rose from the bog and crept over in wisps, inching closer to the cottage. The owls huddled closer together in the aviary and displayed no intention to report for work at the Postal Office. 

Teddy made way through the overgrown shrubbery twice to talk to them, once before the break of dawn and the second time before his own lacklustre oatmeal breakfast. Personally, he didn't think there was any point, but tell that to the Ministry fellows. He received several distressed calls on his Weasleyphone from the Muggle Liaison Office. So there he was, squishing wet grass with the soles of his old Wellingtons, there and back again. To no avail. The second time, a large tawny owl that was currently head of the parliament fixed him with a stare and hooted Teddy out of the aviary. He unpeeled his chilled self from the splintered doorframe against which he'd been slumping, and shuffled out, kicking some of the tattered Muggle and magical newspapers out of his way. The face of the new pureblood PM was beaming from the front pages, smirk prim and cheeks rounded, and even the owls were on strike.

Teddy shoved reddened, cold hands that got cramps making pleading gestures under his armpits.

Beaks were clacking behind his back.

After breakfast, Teddy decided to curl into a ball on the floor and be miserable. The weather was damp. Everything was awful. The owls were eating only this one special kind of owl food that he sure wasn't going to be able to afford with his Gringotts bank account balance if they kept striking. He was an independent contractor for the Postal Office. They didn't pay him those meagre Knuts for nothing.

By the time the old cuckoo clock croaked eleven, Teddy had perfected his best dead Lobalug impression and was about to sink through the dirty wooden floorboards of his own home.

This perfectly sound plan was interrupted by a knock on the door.

Groaning, Teddy rose to a kneeling position. This exhausted his reserves of energy to pretend he cared anymore, and he crawled to the door on all fours. He didn't bother looking into the old second-hand Foeglass that was lying around somewhere in the corridor and croaked out a 'who's there?' from the general vicinity of the threshold.

'Oh, Merlin and Mordred, Teddy, what do you mean 'who's there?' Helga Hufflepuff! Cast a damn spell, you foolish boy! I could be anyone! Why aren't your wards up? What are you think-'

Teddy opened the door, halting the parental rant. Cousin Draco hovered in the doorway, mouth still open mid-sentence at the sight of Teddy sitting tailor-fashion on the floor. Teddy raised an eyebrow. Interrogative. 

Cousin Draco was a dense black warmth against the moist cool of this utterly useless morning. As usual, he was dressed in black slacks and a long thick tunic that went almost to his knees, with some discreet embroidery around the collar, black on black. His cloak was also black, and it slapped heavily against Teddy's calves as Draco pulled him up from the floor and into a hug. There was back-patting. Maybe a little mumbling and sniffling into Draco's shoulder on Teddy's part.

The no-good day was looking up slightly. After all, the presence of a favourite older relative who literally spoiled you rotten and got you out of scrapes for the entire duration of your acquaintance could hardly be anything but comforting.

But.

There was still the small matter of what brought Cousin Draco here. Teddy would have remembered shoving his head in the fireplace and crying for help, or some Galleons for owl food. He was still of a pretty sound mind, he was sure.

So.

Trouble.

Cousin Draco gave Teddy's shoulders a final reassuring squeeze and pulled back. This close, Teddy could see the fine crow's feet around his eyes and a shallow groove between his eyebrows, the sign of a permanent half-aborted dissatisfied frown. Draco's hairline had climbed up significantly higher over the last decade, in a way that would have made him a pinnacle of fashion sometime in the Renaissance. His lips were dry but smooth, and stretched tight in an approximation of polite readiness to smile that usually disguised the tight nervous clench of his jaws. As Teddy remembered from childhood slumber parties at Grimmauld Place, Cousin Draco ground teeth like nobody's business.

Up close, the glamorous haze of being a responsible adult with an important job and a purpose, the one that usually hung around Cousin Draco like a smokescreen and was convincing to just about anyone, was very thin indeed. A week's worth of sleepless nights was definitely shining through.

'I've seen the morning papers. Everything's awful,' sighed Teddy, turning on his heel and shuffling to the kitchen to make tea.

'I've come straight from Diagon. Everything's _worse_.' There came a sound of Cousin Draco toeing off his boots, of socked feet skidding on the floorboards, and a dull 'thump' of someone landing on their butt. 'Dammit.'

Teddy put the kettle on and rummaged through the cupboards for the boxes of homemade biscuits. He wondered if the mood was grim enough to warrant wafer rolls. It probably was. He rose on tip-toes to pull one of the larger boxes from the top shelf. His fingers slid on the carton and Teddy got a heavy shower of rich tea biscuits in his face. 

It was a day for wafer rolls all right, thought Teddy, groping for his wand to clean up the mess.

Thick pale sunlight was leaning heavily against the kitchen windows. The dirt-smudged panes and the very walls of Teddy's cottage were creaking softly under the first still cool touches of a curious summer.

By the time Teddy was done with the crumbles and the kettle was beginning to sing, Cousin Draco had already begun assembling the tray. Teddy noted that he had chosen Aunt Cissy's china, the one with the delicate fuchsia flowers that usually brought a soft smile to his face. Definitely a day for wafer rolls all around, then.

They made tea together and, like a courteous host, Teddy summoned a welcoming grin, twisting his face into an appropriate display of gentleness and affability.

Cousin Draco rolled his eyes and Levitated the tray to the sitting-room. He was a lifetime adept of Muggle 'fake it till you make it' philosophy, and as such thought Teddy's efforts to pretend he was fine were transparent in the extreme. Teddy himself was of two minds about that. After all, he never failed to fool Harry.

'So. What's the word in Diagon, then?' Teddy plopped into the armchair, ignoring the sharp stab of a malicious spring that always aimed for the softest chunk of flesh in his backside.

'More of a roar.' The tray landed on the table with a soft 'clunk'. Cousin Draco landed on the sofa, swinging his feet over the cracked armrest and sighing dramatically. 'Potter's there with the MLE, attempting some crowd management, as they say. Longbottom's there with the crowd, wearing a T-shirt that says _I DIDN'T FIGHT VOLDEMORT FOR THIS_. There are tents. Hannah is distributing free food.' Cousin Draco rubbed his eyes tiredly. 'Hit Wizards were beginning to Stun people when I Disapparated. They say Knockturn is going to be under curfew, it is usually the first to go. I don't even know if I should bother trying to come home tonight, really.'

'Well, you know, my lumpy sofa is your lumpy sofa. You can have my frumpiest afghan,' Teddy added magnanimously. 

'Thank you,' Draco mumbled into the palms he still had pressed against his face. 'I really appreciate you _not_ saying ''Well, that is what you get when you insist on living in a flat in the seediest neighbourhood for its _bohemian atmosphere_ , what example are you setting by living in what you well know has always been the _criminal underbelly_ of wizarding Britain-'' '

Teddy couldn't hold it in any longer and laughed. 'Oh, dear, he really told you that, didn't he. He really did. When was that?'

'After the previous elections.' Draco waved his hand airily, turning his thousand-yard stare onto the plate of biscuits. 'We were briefly on speaking terms, managed to be civil at Padma Patil's wedding. So I thought, if his own bloody Department is setting up a curfew, the least he can do for an inconvenienced citizen like me is let me spend the night at his place, isn't that so? I'm a Healer, I don't keep regular hours. Least of all in times when the MLE itself keeps flooding St Mungo's with Stunned patients. Ended up sleeping in my office after all.' Teddy clucked sympathetically and checked if the teapot was steeped enough. ' _On the floor,_ mind you. Let the mediwitches take the sofa.'

'Oh, do go on, pretend that your personal comfort was thwarted by your impeccable manners. You were probably working all around the clock and kept begging the rest of the staff to take a break and catch a nap, you secret Hufflepuff.'

Draco huffed and crossed his arms sullenly. 'I am not a nice person.'

'No, you're really not, but you're kind of a good one. You're a work in progress.' The tea was fine and Teddy carefully poured Draco a cup. 'You're definitely my favourite these days.'

Draco sat up straight and took the cup and saucer from Teddy's hands. 'You know, I tried _really_ hard for that to be so, but it's kind of ridiculous that it worked.' Teddy shrugged and started filling his own cup. 'You know Potter loves you very much, though. He may have been saying this with overpriced brooms and tickets to the World Quidditch Cup, and obnoxious meddling in your private life, but his own social skills had been stunted back in the day. He learned all his emotional intelligence from Weasley. I know, I was there. He is trying.'

It was kind of endearing how Cousin Draco kept trying to be the mature one and improve Teddy's relationship with Harry, when their own was rocky at best. 'I know he is. It's just – not enough? Families are complicated. But we have what we have.'

'Cheers.'

These days, what they had was each other, mostly, Teddy thought as he bit into a custard cream. In the past few years, both Grandma and Aunt Cissy passed away, and Lucius Malfoy moved to Monte Carlo for his own special kind of grieving and moving on, leaving Draco all alone. And so Teddy and Draco clung together pretty tight these days, supporting each other through their losses and after. Harry, of course, was around too, as always, but frankly, for all his good intentions, he had always been much better at being comforted than at comforting.

With Draco, Teddy didn't bother with putting on the humble, hospitable façade that he dutifully maintained when Harry dropped by radiating poorly concealed distress over one Ministry business or another. There was no need to be keeping up appearances, sparing Deputy Head Auror's pride. He chewed on a sponge finger, knowing that Draco was just as miserable as he was. No need to imitate good cheer and go through the vapid social niceties – vague inquiries about health, comments about the weather… Weather was cloudy with a chance of revolution, and Teddy wasn't sure one could ever be in good enough health for _that_.

' _The Prophet_ wrote they might be leaving the International Confederation of Wizards?' Teddy asked around a mouthful of sweetmeat eventually.

'Oh, they probably wrote that. That has been the talk for years. Is that even the worst of it, one has to wonder,' grumbled Draco, biting into a filbert biscuit. 'You might be one of the few people in Britain who actually saw the morning _Prophet_ today.'

'Mangled by claws, but yes. The only ones still getting the paper like it's business as usual must be the ones whose mail is delivered by personal, family owl.' Teddy took a morose sip of tea. 'The postal ones are all unionised, so.'

'What, they're cutting the Owl Post budget, too? Of course they are. I don't know why I even asked. I'm sorry, Teddy, go on.' Draco snatched another filbert and looked inquiringly.

'Eh, the last time they went on a strike like this was when the Owl Post switched to the outsourcing model. You know, when I got all this instead of a nine-to-five job at the London office?' Teddy waved with both hands, a wide gesture encompassing the old Owlkeeper's cottage and the ramshackle aviary with _freelance, independently contracted owls for the National Owl Post Service, medical insurance and paid leave not provided_. 'And you know I love them to bits, they are sure smarter than my human ex-boss at the Owl Post, but when they are on strike, neither of us get paid. At all. Not that I blame them or disagree with them,' Teddy sighed, nibbling on a langue de chat. 'I have some weeks' worth of owl food. I don't know what we'll do if they're still on strike when it runs out. And they don't give a rat's arse, you know. The owls.'

'Maybe they have a backup plan. Go rogue.' Draco smirked.

'Eat some humans. I bet they have a list.'

Draco reached to pat Teddy's knee. 'There is no way you're on it, though. You're great with owls. I am sure they know none of this is your fault.'

'Yes, well. Maybe they'll take me under their wing when it all goes pear-shaped. Bring me a mouse for dinner now and then when I become a forgotten hermit on this marsh.' Teddy went for another biscuit, a boudoir this time.

Draco stroked the rim of his teacup with a finger. 'Well, you won't be forgotten if there's two of us lurking in here, probably.'

An awful suspicion crawled over the edge of Teddy's mind, plunging into his already overflowing pool of worry. 'What do you mean. You are a Healer at St Mungo's. You have a job, and regular wages, and a – a bohemian flat in Knockturn Alley. Why would you come and live on the marsh with us?' Teddy could both hear and feel his voice rising as he clutched a wafer roll.

Teddy watched a grin creep on Draco's face, an oddly sharp one, and full of grim cheer. 

'Well,' said Cousin Draco, leaning forwards and reaching for the plate of biscuits. 'Well,' he said, grabbing not one, not two, but three wafer rolls. 'Well, they have announced that they are privatising the Magical Healthcare System this morning. Most of us may lose our jobs, and, years of service or not, we both know that there are reasons why I would be among the first ones to be let go.' He paused, chewing and swallowing carefully. 'And so, despite the fact that I had schemed and cajoled and pleaded with Zeller to cover for me so I could get a few days off around Beltane, there I was. Instead of sound asleep under my blanket, as dead to the world as I feel inside from all this time without a whiff of vacation, I was out in the streets with her and Clearwater and all the other harried people from St Mungo's. Just like work, only worse.'

'Oh, Merlin's balls,' Teddy breathed, finally realising. 'That's why you were in Diagon this morning. You weren't going on shift, you were _protesting_.' 

'Yes, and trust me, I appreciate the irony. I was there rubbing shoulders with Longbottom and that palomino chap from Centaurs' Rights Activists. I was shooting up sparks from my wand and Levitating a sign. Somewhere in the world Lucius Malfoy is choking on his pasta with truffles and he doesn't know why.' Draco gave an angry huff. His long, pale fingers snatched a millefruit and he gracelessly shoved it in his mouth. 'And the thing is,' he went on with his mouth full, 'the bloody thing is, I could have been the snooty bastard to buy St Mungo's, and none of it would have mattered. It _would have_ , of course, but – I could have done something! I-' 

Draco finally choked and coughed, washing down the remains of the biscuit with the dregs of his tea. Teddy poured him another cup.

'But of course, when I donate in my own name I'm a fool and when I donate in mother's memory I'm an idiot, and suddenly all the reparations had been paid out of my inheritance, and the rest of the money is all his to gamble away in Monte Carlo. Sure. Fantastic.' Draco drained his cup in a single sip. 'And now Draco Malfoy is not only too poor to influence the thing he cares about, or anything ever, he is _too poor to keep a job._ I am literally unable to save myself.'

A sad gravity enveloped the room, leaving Teddy at a loss for words.

'No, seriously, I have not felt this helpless since Voldemort. You think you've been through the worst, but you are finally brought down not by _this_ ,' Draco said, lifting his forearm, 'but by frigging _budget cuts_ and _reforms_.'

'I have no idea what to say. Welcome to the marsh, I guess,' Teddy groaned, reaching for another wafer roll.

'Thank you. I guess,' Draco half-smiled around a toad-in-a-hole.

The following minutes were filled with the louder sounds of biscuits being consumed, and distant, militant hoots that rather suggested thoughts of gunpowder, treason, and plot. Teddy's mood oscillated between a kind of restless unease and all-consuming sourness. 

Everything was awful. Wasn't this the kind of moment when someone had to do something? And, according to the Harry Potter mythos, that someone was more often than not Teddy's own godfather. Merlin, how he wished it were more likely that Harry would really sweep in to save the day. He turned his head and watched Cousin Draco twirl his empty teacup dejectedly, no doubt lost in memories of his mother.

As a child, Teddy had thought Cousin Draco to be a man of marvellous mirth. He was spectacular. Always keen to indulge Teddy's cravings for a game of Exploding Snap or a ride on a tiny broomstick that safely hovered just above ground. And although Draco always showed up in clothes just a tad more posh and smart than Harry's, he was a much better sport about crawling on his knees in the dirt or getting paint and crayon smudges all over his crisp white sleeves. Later, as a Hogwarts student, Teddy learned to appreciate Cousin Draco as a man of singular learning, someone who was comfortable explaining spells and the intersectionality of magical discipline in a more approachable and grounded manner than, say, the great luminary of mutual acquaintance, Hermione Granger. 

He was witty, he could be mean, and he generally reminded Teddy of a knife blunted by inappropriate use: its handle still gilded and fancy, but with the blade left chipped and rounded through the vagaries of time and grim experiences. 

He was, in short, Teddy's favourite, a fact that baffled Deputy Head Auror Harry Potter in the extreme.

Indeed, there had been a brief, glorious period of time, before Grandma Andromeda died, before Harry was made Deputy Head, even, when Teddy had imagined that it would be a fabulous idea to set up Cousin Draco on a date with Harry. Those were good days, simpler days. Draco and Harry had been on speaking terms then – which had always been an on-again, off-again thing between them – and Teddy had always thought it comical how they went through the entire spectrum of pretend politeness, from actual _Mr Malfoy_ and _Mr Potter_ to _Ferret_ and _Scarhead_ , and had these terrible rows, and yet somehow ended up in each other's orbit time after time. 

(Teddy had been quite the naïve, self-centred teenager once, and hadn't even realised that Draco and Harry kept rebuilding bridges because of him, trying to give him as much of a family as possible, each in his own way. The thought had never crossed his mind, and probably wouldn't have had it not been for a disgruntled likeness of Headmaster Severus Snape popping into a portrait frame in Grandma's living room to voice a few previously unknown truths and a few repetitions of _don't encourage them, Lupin, tone it down, do you know that they both feel the need to complain about each other to me, do you have any idea how little I actually care?_.)

Anyway, that flight of fancy had been too quick and furious to allow for proper planning. In the privacy of Teddy's mind, the actual business of matchmaking remained on the level of merely nebulous humiliations and high fidgets – for Teddy, obviously. No wonder that the actual thing turned into a series of unfortunate events that Teddy shied away from recalling even now. There were humiliations and high fidgets all right. Humiliations and high fidgets all around.

Teddy dimly suspected that Cousin Draco and Harry _had_ been on that date after all, which was the root of the problem. Neither of them admitted it, though. Whatever had transpired was shrouded in mystery. At one point Teddy had grown so curious he'd even asked the portrait of Severus Snape about it, but the Headmaster had merely called him a dunderhead and walked out of the frame, then returned and snapped out, 'Your _father_ was _smart_. For your own sake, I hope you will grow into it, Lupin.'

They're usually the grumpy sort, those portraits.

Polishing off a champagne biscuit, Teddy thought about that hypothetical maybe-date again. It was a nice, pleasingly distracting thought – made even more pleasant by the fact that it came from infinitely more pleasant times, when people he loved were not dead, and he did not have to work for a living, and everything was not that awful. Good times. Teddy shooed away actual memories and bitter realism and hastened to envision what the date might have been like.

Really, what could have been?

He imagined Harry stumbling into something slightly less dodgy than the Hog's Head and slightly more exciting than the Leaky Cauldron, his Auror cloak just as dusty as usual and the collar of his shirt bearing slovenly stains of sweat after a shift – no, he would have cleaned up – most definitely – if anything, Headmaster Snape's _portrait_ would have yelled at him to do it – 

He imagined Harry nursing a pint – maybe a cocktail – what if he spilled it, though, and tried a Vanishing Spell, and accidentally Vanished something else – never mind, let it be a pint – 

He imagined Harry nursing a pint and waiting for Cousin Draco to show up. Cousin Draco would have been late of course – not that he was always late, but usually – he would have done it out of spite were he meeting Harry, wouldn't he – no, suppose he wouldn't – he would have wanted to be on time, but something would have happened at St Mungo's and Draco would have been late anyway, just Teddy's luck. And they both would have been a bit pissed off and a bit pissed, and – and – 

All right, Teddy the naïve self-centred teenager would have thought this to be the moment the date went down the drain. Teddy just the tiniest bit jaded twenty-something thought it sounded like a perfectly fine date given Harry and Draco's history, and extremely likely to end in a steamy one-night stand that they had decided to never talk about ever, for Mysterious Adult Reasons.

Seeing as Teddy had been recently forced to admit to himself that he, too, was now Actually an Adult, he also knew first-hand that Mysterious Reasons were actually poppycock and adults didn't know anything, either.

Ergo.

It was entirely possible that Teddy was actually an awesome matchmaker and Harry and Draco had simply ruined everything just because. The thought was oddly cheering. Against the background of this glum morning, glum week, glum _months_ , it was positively frivolous. Teddy bounced in his armchair with joy and was promptly rewarded with a vicious stab of the traitorous spring. This did not diminish his illogical enthusiasm in the slightest.

'Maybe you should seduce Harry again and you can lead the revolution together!'

Draco stared. And stared.

'See, I am sure it made sense in your gluten-addled mind but I honestly have no idea what you could have meant with these words put together in that order.'

Teddy, feeling immeasurably smug, stole an orange biscuit right from under Draco's fingertips.

'I am a genius matchmaker. And mastermind. And Owlkeeper. I am, and have been, unknown to myself, a man of unparalleled talents.'

Draco stared.

'It will be glorious. He will have universal support. It will be unpopular to not support him. He has the right backstory for politics. And it's much better that he is Deputy Head now. Too high profile and claiming to have been against the system would have been ridiculous even for the _Daily Prophet_. He'll be the spearhead. You will be kingmaker.'

Draco stared.

'You are about to become unemployed. You will have lots of free time. Trust me, it gets boring on the marsh. Do not waste precious moments, go plot a coup d’état.'

Draco finally blinked and reached for the last of the millefruit.

'What about our revolutionary hero. How on earth will he see the error of his obedient law enforcement ways.'

'I'll invite Harry for supper tonight.'

Teddy took a delicious sip of his lukewarm tea while Draco carefully put the entire biscuit in his mouth and chewed, close-lipped and predatory.

'I bet Rita Skeeter would even come out of retirement for this.'

Outside, the air was pierced by a victorious owl screech.


End file.
